Friday, May 10, 2013

This is Gratitude both past and present. During your Diamond Hour,
spend 3-5 minutes generating the most positive emotions you can.
Imagine all of the things in your life for which you ALREADY feel gratitude: life, love, health, family, a roof over your head, etc. As you do, chant out loud something like “I’m SO grateful for my loving children! I’m SO grateful for a strong, healthy body! I’m SO grateful for a healthy mind and happy heart!” and so on.

The core message of “As A Man Thinketh” and countless other self-help books is that our minds and emotions create our worlds.

My
very favorite goal-setting technique, the “Time Line” process created
by Tad James, suggests that you need to visualize (or “mentalize”) your
goal, its position on your time line (visualized as a string of actions
and incidents stretching off into your future), the intermediate actions
necessary to support that goal. Then you have to check the degree to
which your internal ecology supports your goal: your beliefs, value
hierarchy, and positive and negative emotional anchors or associations.

But
the “carrier tone” of the entire thing is emotion. Enthusiasm. In
the terms of Aikido master Koichi Tohei, does your “Ki” extend out into
the world, or does the world’s negative energy “back up” into you?
Imagine it like a stream running into a poisoned pond. So long as the
water flows outwards, the poisoned water doesn’t enter the stream.

That
is the power of enthusiasm. And it is impossible to feel enthusiastic
and positive if all you see in your life right now is the negative.
OUR EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT CONTROL OUR EMOTIONS. What we focus
upon, our beliefs and perceptual filters control our emotions…big time.
For 27 years, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, convicted of sabotage
against the system of apartheid.

But instead of becoming embittered,
he used that time to benefit his people, clarify his values, and deepen
his spiritual nature.

He focused on what could be done.

Remember
the success equation? GOALS X FAITH X ACTION X GRATITUDE = SUCCESS.
Because this equation is multiplicative rather than additive, a zero in
any category will KILL your dreams. So no matter how hard it may be, it
is critical that every day you find something to be grateful for, right
here, rght now.

“No, dammit!” I can hear some of you howl.
“I don’t have anything to be grateful for! I refuse to feel positive
about my life!” Like Captain Kirk in The Final Fronteir: “I don't
want my pain taken away! I need my pain!”

Says a fictional character.

Mistaking
this for anything other than childish ego would be a huge mistake. If
you learn the lesson, you don’t need the pain. Only if you insist on
remaining ignorant do you need to hold onto the negative emotions. Dig
deep. Learn the lesson. Then let the negative emotions go, trusting
that you won’t make the same mistakes again.

You can afford to be
grateful. Afford to embrace the small miracles of life, and find joy
in any circumstance, no matter how difficult. In fact, the hard fact is
that the only way to maximize your chances of moving to a BETTER
circumstance is by finding joy right where you are. If this seems a
contradiction, you have my sympathy. I can only say that you need to
wrestle with this one until you “get it.”

About Me

For the last thirty years or so I’ve been a lecturer, coach, novelist and television writer. For the last forty years I’ve been involved variously in the martial arts, and for all my life I’ve studied and enjoyed yoga. Not that I worked at it as hard and honestly as I should have—I’d be a combination of BKS Iyengar and Bruce Lee if I had.
After publishing about three million words of science fiction (including the New York Times bestsellers The Legacy of Heorot and The Cestus Deception) and having about twenty hours of produced television shows (including The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Andromeda, and Stargate, as well as four episodes of the immortal Baywatch), I’ve got opinions on the writing life.
After earning black belts in Judo and Karate, and practicing the Indonesian art of Pentjak Silat Serak for the last fifteen, well, I have some opinions there, as well. And having struggled to live consciously since childhood...well, those opinions are probably strongest of all.